Waterwheel and Mill Apparatus

Waterwheel at the Barbegal Mill

This is a cutaway view of one waterwheel and its associated millstone and gearing at the Roman Barbegal mill complex in southern France. This model shows an overshot waterwheel (one of sixteen in the complex!), which drives a millstone (above) through right-angle gearing.

“The sciences do not try to explain; they hardly even try to interpret; they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which…describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.”

~Johann Von Neumann

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